Social engineering is the art of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. While similar to a confidence trick or simple fraud, the term typically applies to trickery for information gathering or computer system access and in most cases the attacker never comes face-to-face with the victim.

When I said you have to believe your own lie, I didn't mean you literally had to have a schizophrenic disorder and ACTUALLY believe your own lie. What I was trying to get across is that your lie has to be so good that you yourself could buy it.

sanddbox wrote:He still could have been simply lying. When someone makes an accusation that rings true, one usually responds with hostility. It's similar to a cornered animal going from its usual skittish state to an aggressive, fight-to-the-death state.

Good point, didn't think about it like that. I thought it was the opposite, I thought when you're accusing someone of doing something, the guilty tend to take a defensive stance if they want to convince you that they didn't do it, whereas the innocent tend to go on the offence because they're pissed off about being accused of something they didn't do. I read that somewhere but since then I noticed this tendency in myself a few times. The matter is obviously more complicated than that though. One day I was in a shopping centre (a mall) and 2 security guards were talking to this woman and she was giving them all sorts of shit and acting like it was an outrage that they were accusing her of stealing but even I could tell she did it cuz there were holes where she cut the security tags off so her hostility was probably a last resort strategy to throw the security guards off. I've seen that kinda thing work in movies but in real life that was the only time I'd seen it and it didn't appear to be working. I like the cornered dog analogy. I like to use it in the context of society though. If you keep taking more and more freedoms from a person in subtle ways thinking that they'll just accept it. its similar to someone gradually closing in on a dog, sooner or later the dogs gonna be cornered and the persons gonna get mauled

When I said you have to believe your own lie, I didn't mean you literally had to have a schizophrenic disorder and ACTUALLY believe your own lie. What I was trying to get across is that your lie has to be so good that you yourself could buy it.

Basically, ya'll gots ta lie good.

Thats what I meant by it too but the above posters had a good point. People are capable of actually being deluded into truly believing their own lie. While their subconscious might know the facts, it covers them up from the conscious mind in order to maintain the delusion. Thats not exactly what was behind the SQL scenario though but similar because the brain remembers EVERYTHING so the guy having the SQL command mixed up was in part caused by his brain not allowing him to recall all the facts.

tremor77 wrote:You need to pad the lie with just enough truth that, the lie doesn't feel too bad. For most non-insane people I think trying to pass a lie as truth would be difficult. Passing the lie off as a twist on truth however, is easier.

Very true. Now that I think of it, this is what makes it so easy for me to deal with the pharmacists because most of the time they'll ask me "what are you using it for?" and I'll reply "I have a broken tooth but I don't have a dental appointment for a week". I actually do have a broken tooth so part of what I'm saying is the truth. Thats pretty interesting, if bits and pieces of what you're saying is the truth then you should be intermittently displaying the body language that goes with telling the truth. In my case my tooth doesn't hurt and I don't have a dental appointment but although my answer to the question is a lie, the sentence I answer it with is the truth.

tremor77 wrote: Now as far as being high or not, while telling it.. I think there are varying degrees, based on the type of high. If I were to lie to a medical professional (specially a pharmacist) however, I think I'd prefer to be in a more sober state, as... there are other physical characteristics you display while high, that they are trained to notice... and I think someone with this training (I have it as a wilderness first responder) will tend to skew their insights toward an individual based on whether they think they are on drugs or not. If I talk to someone who could be under the effects of a drug, which I can generally tell quite easily.. I tend to immediately regard them as in an altered state and potentially not trustworthy.

Definitely, my dad is a crafty bastard as it is but he tells me that when he takes some valium and drinks a few beers he could sell ice to eskimos. Yeah when you know what to look for you can spot signs that someone is on a particular type of substance but this is never fool proof. Physical signs such as constricted or dilated pupils could be due to a physical condition the person has. Behavioural signs such as edginess or lack of motor control could be due to a mental condition the person has. For example I have abnormally stable emotions, limited facial expressions and don't develop any rapport with people so people who don't know me often suspect that I'm on benzodiazepines. In reality I display these traits cuz I'm mildly autistic (according to the psychiatrist at least). Unfortunately for the stoned social engineer though, not everyone knows enough to take these exceptions into consideration.